Germany - Yenidze in Dresden

DRESDEN
Yenidze, the former cigarette factory.

Sent by Diana from Germany.

This is from Wikipedia : Yenidze is the name of a former cigarette factory building in Dresden, Germany. It was built between 1907 and 1909 and is used today as an office building. It is notable for its Orientalizing exterior design which borrows design elements from mosques.

"Yenidze" was the name of a tobacco company started by the entrepreneur Hugo Zietz, which imported tobacco from Ottoman Yenidze, Thrace (modern Genisea, Greece). The "Oriental" style of architecture publicized the origin of the tobacco. It has 600 windows of various styles; the dome is 20m high.

The architect Martin Hammitzsch designed the building in 1907. It has large, colored dome chimneys which resemble minarets. It was sometimes referred to as the "tobacco mosque", a term which is no longer officially used as the building is not a mosque. It is a unique historical feature of the city of Dresden.

Because it is an unusual architectural monument for the city, the building was restored in 1996 and is now an office building. Underneath the dome, events take place regularly, mainly readings of fairy tales.